Modern Transformations of sādhanā as Art, Study, and Awareness: Religious Experience and Hindu Tantric Practice

Abstract

“My first raising of the kuṇḍalinī was hearing Ma [her teacher] speak about art.” The experience of the awakening of śakti within practitioners in contemporary cultures occurs both in traditional religious settings and within novel circumstances. Traditional situations include direct transmission from a guru (śaktipāta), self-awakening through the practice of kuṇḍalinī-yoga or haṭhayoga, and direct acts of grace (anugraha) from the goddess or god. There are also novel expressions in hybrid religious-cultural experiences wherein artists, dancers, and musicians describe their arts explicitly in terms of faith/devotion (śraddhā, bhakti, etc.) and practice (sādhanā). They also describe direct experience of grace from the goddess or describe their ostensibly secular teachers as gurus. In contemporary experience, art becomes sādhanā and sādhanā becomes art. Creativity and artistic expression work as modern transformations of traditional religious experience. This development, while moving away from traditional ritual and practice, does have recognizable grounding within many tantric traditions, especially among the high tantra of the Kashmiri Śaiva exegetes.

Global Meditation Practices

“…Since ancient times, the benefits of meditation have been known among lay people to promote stillness within oneself and connect to one's deeper self for healing and rejuvenation 10. In the late 1900s, researchers noticed the benefits of meditation, and since then, worldwide research has focused on its therapeutic outcomes 10,11. The most common form of MBIs in the recent research literature is mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), a meditation technique created by Jon Kabat-Zinn in 1984 12.…”

“…10 In the late 1900s, researchers noticed the benefits of meditation, and since then, worldwide research has focused on its therapeutic outcomes. 10,11 The most common form of MBIs in the recent research literature is mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), a meditation technique created by Jon Kabat-Zinn in 1984. 12 According to Kabat-Zinn, 13 MBSR involves "paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, nonjudgmentally."…”